The Girl with all the Gifts by RM Carey

This book rang a lot of my reading bells all at once and I loved it. It’s suspenseful but not scary, it’s kinda gross, but not off-puttingly so, the premise is realistic enough to keep me interested, the characters are flawed, but not so much that I want them all to die, the ending is satisfying but completely unexpected. It was just a really great read.

One review of this book said it was Kazuo Ishiguro meets The Walking Dead, which is apt, but I would also add The Day of the Triffids to that mix. And, while I understand the comparison to Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, I feel that’s a little unfair because I really disliked Never Let Me Go. I thought it was a waste of a really great idea, and suffered from not really knowing what kind of book it was. I’m all for mixing genres – literary fiction and sci-fi worked brilliantly in Station Eleven – I just found Never Let Me Go to be too wishy-washy and not enough of either genre. But I digress.

I don’t want to say too much about The Girl with all the Gifts, I knew next to nothing going into it and I’m really glad about that. I think it’s enough to say that if you like The Walking Dead, you’ll definitely find something to like about this one. Happy reading!